Background: The role of inflammatory and hemodynamic stress biomarkers in heart failure (HF) patients treated de novo with beta-blockers has been poorly studied. Methods: A total of 86 patients (age 56 +/- 9 years, 81 men) with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) < 40% and previously not treated with beta-blockers were initiated on carvedilol. At baseline and 12 months later we performed ech

Consumption of sugar has been relatively high in the Nordic countries; the impact of sugar intake on metabolic risk factors and related diseases has been debated. The objectives were to assess the effect of sugar intake (sugar-sweetened beverages, sucrose and fructose) on association with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and related metabolic risk factors (impaired glucose tolerance, insuli

Aims/hypothesis We selected the most informative protein biomarkers for the prediction of incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) in people with type 2 diabetes. Methods In this nested case-control study we measured 42 candidate CVD biomarkers in 1,123 incident CVD cases and 1,187 controls with type 2 diabetes selected from five European centres. Combinations of biomarkers were selected using cross-

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: To date, the molecular function of most of the reported type 2 diabetes-associated loci remains unknown. The introduction or removal of cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) dinucleotides, which are possible sites of DNA methylation, has been suggested as a potential mechanism through which single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) can affect gene function via epigenetics. The aim of this

P>1. Environmental changes may not always result in rapid changes in species distributions, abundances or diversity. In order to estimate the effects of, for example, land-use changes caused by agri-environment schemes (AES) on biodiversity and ecosystem services, information on the time-lag between the application of the scheme and the responses of organisms is essential. 2. We examined the effec

The COX2 rs5277 (306G>C) polymorphism has been associated with inflammation-associated cancers. In breast cancer, tumor COX-2 expression has been associated with increased estrogen levels in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive and activated Akt-pathway in ER-negative tumors. Our study investigated the impact of COX2 genotypes on early breast cancer events and treatment response in relation to tumor ER

Chronic hyperglycemia leads to pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction characterized by diminished glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS), but the precise cellular processes involved are largely unknown. Here we show that pancreatic beta-cells chronically exposed to a high glucose level displayed substantially increased amounts of stress fibers compared with beta-cells cultured at a low glucose leve

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) has a well-documented positive effect on mortality and heart failure morbidity. The aim of this study was to assess the long-term survival and the predictive value of self-assessed functional status on the long-term prognosis of patients treated with CRT-pacemaker (CRT-P).METHODS AND RESULTS: Data were retrospectively collected from medical records of 446 co

Genetic case-control association studies often include data on clinical covariates, such as body mass index (BMI), smoking status, or age, that may modify the underlying genetic risk of case or control samples. For example, in type 2 diabetes, odds ratios for established variants estimated from low-BMI cases are larger than those estimated from high-BMI cases. An unanswered question is how to use

Although methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, a folate enzyme gene, has been associated with idiopathic male infertility, few studies have examined other folate-related metabolites and genes. We investigated whether idiopathic male infertility is associated with variants in folate, vitamin B-12 (B12) and total homocysteine (tHcy)-related genes and measured these metabolites in blood. We conducted

Phenological shifts linked to global warming reflect the ability of organisms to track changing climatic conditions. However, different organisms track global warming differently and there is an increasing interest in the link between phenological traits and plant abundance and distribution. Long-term data sets are often used to estimate phenological traits to climate change, but so far little has

Aims/hypothesis Since protein ingestion is known to stimulate the secretion of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), we hypothesised that enhancing GLP-1 secretion to harness its insulinotropic/beta cell-stimulating activity with whey protein pre-load may have beneficial glucose-lowering effects in type 2 diabetes. Methods In a randomised, open-label crossover clinical trial, we studied 15 individuals

We examined the independent and combined associations of physical activity and obesity with incident type 2 diabetes in men and women. The InterAct case-cohort study consists of 12,403 incident type 2 diabetes cases and a randomly selected subcohort of 16,154 individuals, drawn from a total cohort of 340,234 participants with 3.99 million person-years of follow-up. Physical activity was assessed b

Aims/hypothesis We aimed to identify which surrogate index of insulin sensitivity has the strongest correlation with the reference measurement, the hyperinsulinaemic-euglycaemic clamp (HEC), to determine which surrogate measure should be recommended for use in large-scale studies. Methods A literature search (1979-2012) was conducted to retrieve all articles reporting bivariate correlations betwee